High Park has a lot of cherry trees. They bloom for such a short time and it’s hard to predict when peak bloom will be, so it can be difficult to organize a get-together with friends. The park is just a few minutes away by bike, though, so it would be a shame to miss it. This year I guiltlessly went on my own to see the cherry blossoms, enjoy the brief spectacle, and marvel at how busy the park is during those few days.

I like the delicacy of watercolours, but have never quite gotten the hang of doing them with actual water. I fuss about with water and paints, and then I end up with this brownish-grey mess that doesn’t look anywhere near what I wanted. Drawing on my tablet PC is helping me learn to enjoy drawing, so maybe my tablet PC can also help me learn to enjoy painting.

Here’s the rest of what I drew/painted:

I used Artrage 4 because it can mimic brushes and other cool things. I don’t have the level of real-life watercolour experience that would make me frustrated with the tool’s limitations, so I’m learning by trial and error. I want to make etagami – picture letters! Here are some examples:

• etagami-inbox
• kiirakirsi’s pinterest
• Dosankodebbie’s etagami notebook
• Maybe I can send my friends and family digital hand-painted letters, and then eventually move to doing them on paper… Or as print-outs, but that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

My first instinct had been to say, “No, not really. Look at these. They’re just stick figures. You can do them too!”

Then I realized: this is it – this is that self-deprecation-of-what-you-do that I’ve heard so much about, but so far had managed to escape as a woman in technology simply because I learned that confidence early. In a new field, I found that familiar ghost.

I’ve been learning to answer, “Yes, I am. I turn business and technology ideas into one-page visual summaries.”

The journey to that response has been about giving myself permission to accept this identity as part of my self. Working with technology has been part of me since childhood. I’ve built the habit of writing over the past decade. Sketchnotes are so recent – just two years since I posted my first one! – and yet because they’re visual and more useful to more people, I get more accolades for them than for anything else.

Is this art? If so, it’s a very practical one. I take notes to remember and to help other people learn. But art is in the eye of the beholder, too. If people see a sketchnote as art, then it’s art. Who am I to invalidate the joy they take in creativity, especially if they end up learning along the way?

I play around with keywords. Do I introduce myself as a sketchnote artist, a sketchnote communicator, a visual communicator? And yet “geek” is a much larger part of my identity – tinkerer, developer, builder. Then there’s this 5-year-experiment where I’m learning about business and capitalism and making good things happen. Fortunately, other people have dealt with the complexity of combining many passions in their life. They’ve figured this out. I can too.

You can view 3 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I always find Japanese woodblock prints fascinating, and we spent some
time in that gallery. I'm also drawn to calligraphy, classical
sculptures, and realistic paintings (particularly those with literary
or mythological references, like classical paintings). I like room
reproductions, too – glimpses of what people's lives were like in the
past or how they are elsewhere. I like pieces with stories.

We'll go back one of these Fridays. It would be nice to contemplate a
single thing and learn its story. Too bad there are no Wikipedia
kiosks in the museum. Do you think there'll be wireless?

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.